Review: We played RANDOMISE!

Here at DadGeek HQ we love games. Although it may seem like we’re mostly into video games, we’re just as keen on board and card games, especially ones that we can all play together as a family (this doesn’t include Munchkin since the great Boxing Day Argument of 2011. Those scars are still healing). So we were pretty excited when Gamely Games sent us a copy of their party card game, Randomise!

Randomise is a whole lot of fun considering it comes in such a dinky little box. It’s a party game similar in theme to charades or Pictionary and mashes both of them together to form a party game with all the best elements of both of them. The box contains three sorts of cards. ‘A’ cards contain lists of adjectives (i.e. hairy, angry), ‘B’ cards are used to specify nouns (bunny, vampire, etc) and ‘C’ cards describe what you’re doing (skydiving, taking a photo, etc, etc).

When gathered into two teams of like-minded individuals, it is the opposing team that gets to decide what you’ll be communicating (via choosing numbers related to options on the cards) but not until you’ve already decided whether you’re going to act, describe or draw. If you choose to describe, you get 30 seconds to get your point across. Acting gives you 60 seconds and drawing gets you the longest, 90 seconds.

The immediate thing this has over charades is that it has a built-in random content generator, meaning you no longer have to stand in front of your nearest and dearest gawping at the ceiling while you think of a film or celebrity to act out. The reason I like it better than Pictionary is that that game comes in a huge box that you don’t really want to lug around to a friends house. Randomise comes in a tiny box that would fit snugly in your pocket.

We played Randomise on a Saturday night when we had a couple of people over. Some of you may recognise Marc from our recent DaGaShi video. We were also joined by our 8 yr old, Marshall, just to make sure the game had an appeal to the younger player.

We had a great time playing Randomise. There was definitely a trend towards drawing at the start due to the longer time but gradually people started having a go at acting and describing. Also, as we got closer to the score limit, people got braver about trying out the Hard option on the cards to get themselves more bonus points.

Randomise should be in everyone’s repertoire of quick and easy party games, especially as the festive season approaches and families get together to celebrate. We’ll definitely be getting it out again before the year is out.